Dragonfall

A Winter Ranger's Tale

19

JAN/13

(Eildor) We were on a hill over watching the gnoll encampment. Then all of a sudden we were had to have been dreaming. We found ourselves in a winter area surrounded by snow. We all quickly noticed that our faleen, our rock throwing friend was nowhere to be found. However, I was able to find his foot print making path leading off into the forest. We all agreed to follow these marks to see if we could find our missing friend. While walking in the forest his foot prints just suddenly vanished. This was not right…Someone must have covered his tracks. As I stood up to let the party know of our lack of foot prints I and Reene were caught in a trap hanging from a tree. He was able to change form and escape, however I was not. Not long after that did we see a hunting group of humans. We told them we were only here looking for our friend and did not want to harm them. They agreed to talk with us, but not in that setting. They took us to their camp and we spoke with their leaders about where we came from and what we were doing here. After a long talk of our journey we were interrupted by there scouts from the north. The scout explained how they were over run at one of their out posts by a machine, whatever that is, that looked more like a man in armor. Whatever it was we had to earn their trust to get them to help us find our friend who may have been taken by the evil ruler of the land. He calls himself the Iron Shogun. From this point we set out with the captain of their guard to the out post to the south. When we got there it was all decimated. We found ourselves facing the armor covered machines. This battle took some time and was only good for showing us how to over come them. As we continued, we had agreed to acquire a few wagons of ore to get into the Iron Shoguns Castle. A few days had past and we felt this evil essence in the area…before we new it we were fighting the odd looking creators who proved to an easy foe. When they were all slush the pulled themselves together some how. However, this foe seemed to be much easier to take on than he looked. By the time this battle ended we were all tired and needed to get some rest. We agreed to follow the captain to his next out post and rest there, and continue on to the wagons in the morning. When we got there we found that the wagons were heavily guarded. We had our witch friend create a wall of wind that they could not pass so we could steal the wagons. This was not as easy as it sounded. Our foes were much stronger than I had thought. As we cut through these fiends and brought them do one by one. the witch let our a cry for help. I rushed to aid her by keeping the foe off of her. This was difficult, because my wife what under heavy attack. None the less my tactics seemed too much for them and I was able to successfully save them both from harm and get them on their feet. I don’t think my foe liked this. The next thing I knew I was on the ground fighting for my life….

(Chisarrah) Letting one arrow after another loose on the strange Mechanical fighters, I noticed that Eildor was on his feet one second, then on his back the next. The battle was seemed as if it was lasting a lifetime and was ever so slowly heading in the direction of the enemy’s favor. I jumped onto one of the wagons that Eilonwy and Reene so cleverly claimed ;) and agreed to start heading off towards the iron shogun’s castle -as long as everyone in our party was on board the wagons of course. There was still a good chunk of enemy waiting to fight in front of us, so we decided to do or die and charge. As we started off for the charge Reene swiftly grabbed Eildor and plopped him on the wagon. With charging the enemy ahead, releasing arrows as fast as possible at whatever possible, and the rebels helping by fighting in the background, we barely but surely got through and headed towards the shogun.

After getting ourselves together and dressing wounds, we decided to replace the inside of some of the dead machines with ourselves. Although we had the idea of scouting out the castle before going in, the party really only had the interest of getting Faleen and figuring out how to escape wherever we were. Approaching the castle in our disguises we stopped at the door way for the to do what we figured a usual inspection. The hunter who was somewhat familiar with the land and had all intentions of helping us get into the castle for his own personal quest, was luckily disguised as a captain and was the only one addressed as we entered the castle. When asked why we were late the hunter explained that we had been attacked by rebels which caused a bit of “lag” in our traveling time. Our tardiness was excused and we were released to take the wagons away(where ever that was). Upon finding the right location for the wagons we set out to scope the tower and find Faleen. In finding ourselves at the tavern we went in and sat down to blend in with the others. We overheard some chatting about what was being referred to as, a “mysterious creature” that had never been seen in these lands before. This creature was captured, and being held in a room that no one was able to visit – as were the orders from the shogun. Eildor, noticing some familiarization in his “uniform” and those having this conversation, attempted to join them. After a few minutes of talking, Eildor told them that we had captured something sounding quite similar to this creature they were referring to and we were curious to see if it was the same one. They hesitantly agreed, and sent their lowest ranking man to lead us to the room. The room we were first taken to showed someone other than Faleen, so the description of what we were looking for was given again and we were taken down another hallway, and stopped at the door. The escort informed us that he would not go any farther for the shogun forbid it. So we were left to go in on our own. After walking down the hallway we came to a wall that seemed to be a dead end, but once closer to it we were able to feel wind coming from the direction of the wall. Eilonwy sent mariah, to check it out and we were told about a door that was beyond the wall. In search of a way to get to the door on the other side we went with the idea to go talk to someone to see if we could get a pass through and ended up in what was labeled “wardens office”. We entered the room together and the hunter, because he was disguised as the highest ranking of our group, started off speaking. Things were going fairly well and it was looking as if we were having a 50/50 chance of getting a pass, but that 50/50 was slowly coming in out favor; Until Eilonwy spoke. Once her voice was heard we were ordered to take off our helmets and we had no choice seeing as inn the time it took to voice the four worded sentence “take off your helmets!”, we were completely surrounded by guards. We were taken to see the shogun immediately where shortly after arriving he called out his lieutenant. The Lieutenant was told to decided his own punishment for letting our party into the gate. A voice from our party spoke out and said his punishment should be to fight Faleen, when the shogun had a quick laugh and ordered the lieutenant to remove his helmet. We were in shock as we found out that the idea of Faleen and the lieutenant fighting each other as punishment would be impossible because the Lieutenant was in fact, our friend Faleen. Faleen explained how we were deceived and that we were helping the wrong guys. He asked if we had gone to the village, and we exclaimed that we had not. Faleen further explained that if we had we would have seen them prospering. When all was said and done we decided to let Faleen help his long time friend, but we wanted nothing to do with the war. It took him about a week before everything was complete on the Shogun’s mission. Before we left we were offered gifts to help us in our journey ahead. The Shogun told us that we were brought to their land by their Artificer. Upon meeting the man he explained how his machine brought us and could send us back. At that point Reene asked if it could bring the mayor to us and the man explained that we needed something of the mayors. Reene handed him a gem that was not of the mayors, but the Artificer did not know that. As we prepared to leave we stepped into the machine and before we knew it thing were exploding in his office and we found ourselves back in our land….I hope Reene’s plan worked. For the gem that he gave up belonged to the dragon….